Guidelines such as our Parachute Canada guidelines were done in conjunction with the federal government and our Public Health Agency of Canada. We developed a really strong guideline.
The challenge I see as a clinician is that I have young athletes coming into my clinic every day from various sporting organizations in our different local leagues across Ontario, and many of them have never seen our Parachute Canada guidelines. It's a very strong, well-documented guideline. We've been using it with some of our national sports organizations. My challenge is that, when I present this to the patient, I would like them to be able to take it to their sporting organizations across our province. Locally, in Barrie, this isn't happening.
What I would like to see is that this guideline we developed with federal funding gets support at the provincial level that trickles, for example, in Barrie, to our Barrie Minor Hockey Association. I would like them to use it. We could have one guideline supported across all of Canada, to which every organization would have access.
This guideline has medical assessment forms in it, medical clearance forms. It has a protocol that is a very good protocol for coaches and parents. It includes pre-season education. It outlines what to do when your son or daughter has a concussion, who they need to see at various steps of their injury and when they should be referred to a multidisciplinary concussion centre.
If we had this, and if everyone were using the same form, we wouldn't have confusion. What's happening is that individual clinics are developing their own guidelines. They're developing statements, and then these organizations don't know which ones to use. Unfortunately, our federally funded one isn't getting into the hands of the athletes who need it.
I've been fortunate enough in Oro-Medonte to use the guideline developed by Parachute Canada.